


Cosette's Unexpected Party

by melannen



Series: Les Mis Crossovers That Should Not Be [7]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Awkwardness, Crossover, Gen, I'm Sorry Tolkien, In a way, alternate universe - plot fusion, many meetings, mnemonics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 10:10:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3764209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Which Cosette Fauchelevent allows her kitchen to be annexed by a group of rag-tag freedom fighters; or: How To Tell Les Amis Apart From A Very Long Way Away</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cosette's Unexpected Party

**Author's Note:**

> I started this two years ago and it is literally how I learned to tell Les Amis apart. It's been sitting on my hard drive because I keep getting stalled on the filk required for the next part but I figured it it could be helpful to someone else why not share?

In a tidy little townhouse on the Rue Plumet, there lived a young lady. She went by the name Cosette Fauchelevent, under the belief that it was her own, and she had every appearance of being an entirely proper young lady. She had been educated at a convent, and now lived a sheltered, retired life in the company of her elderly father; who was, on this particular day, away on one of his periodic and mysterious business trips.

Cosette was usually as content as any young lady could possibly be with this quiet mode of life, but there was something that beat in her, on occasion, that cried out for wider horizons than a townhouse on the Rue Plumet - perhaps it was some remnant, in her blood, from her father's mysterious past.

That teatime she found herself agitated by a reminder of that past, for she had been visited that morning by an old foster-sister of hers, by the name of Éponine Thénardier. Éponine, thought Cosette, was a nice enough girl, but she was given to wandering around the city at night, wearing boys' clothes, keeping company with people who were not respectable, and indulging in odd visions and fancies. Today she had been saying something about coffee-shops that closed unexpectedly, and anti-government plots, and whether Cosette had ever thought about such things, what with her boy, and her past, and so on. It was just as well she had gone so quickly, Cosette thought, for she had no interest in any trouble Éponine might bring to the house, no matter how much the scent of excitement she carried with her had brightened the dull solitude of the house; especially since Cosette certainly had no interest in boys, or the government, and knew very little about her past.

Her contemplations were interrupted by a knock at the front door, and, the housekeeper Toussaint being out shopping, she rose to answer it, thinking it was only the servant returning with her hands full of packages.

But when she opened the door, she saw not the familiar old woman, but a new-looking, and tolerably fine, coat and hat, in a dull shade of black. They had come to her doorstep on the body of a young man of handsome, if not distinctive, features. He was staring very intently at Cosette; she thought he looked vaguely familiar, but she was a bit disconcerted by his sudden appearance at her door.

"Hello?" she said.

"Hello!" he replied, with a rather ridiculous bow, and then blushed bright red. "It's a pleasure and a delight to meet you at last. I'm Marius, uh, Marius Pontmercy, at your service, Mademoiselle," he said, all very quickly. 

"Cosette Fauchelevent, at your service," she replied automatically, and he stared very hard at the floor. When they had carried on in this manner for several awkward moments with no further response from him, she thought perhaps he had come to ask her father for charity - the clothes he wore under the hat and coat showed quite a bit of wear - which might explain his hesitation.

"Would you like to come in?" she asked, falling back on politeness. "I can make tea, and there are some pastries, I think--"

He accepted with alacrity, hanging his black hat and overcoat on a hook by the door, and she led him back to the kitchen, thinking that Toussaint might find that slightly more acceptable than her entertaining a strange young man in the parlor. He sat down at the table, and stared at her with disconcerting intentness as she began to prepare the tea.

But she had no more than put the kettle on when there was another knock at the door, and she exclaimed with some relief, "Oh, do pardon me, I must go answer that."

She hoped perhaps that this time it would be Toussaint returning; she would take the woman's scolding gladly in exchange for some aid in extracting the strange, intense young man from her kitchen. Instead, she found another strange young man on her doorstep - this one wore a worker's cap, and an even more worn coat, smudged in places with bright splashes of paint.

"Name's Feuilly," he said shortly. "Pleased to meet you, citizeness," and then peering around Cosette to where Pontmercy's coat and hat were hung, said, "Ah, I see I'm not the first to arrive for the meeting!"

"Yes, M. Pontmercy has just arrived," Cosette said, in a state of some confusion. "I've just put on some tea--" She was too bewildered to do more than step back so that Feuilly could come in and hang his own coat and cap beside the others.

"He did seem rather more keen than usual about this meeting," Feuilly confided in her as she led him down the passage. "At this rate we'll soon have him more interested in partition than in Bonaparte."

"Partition?" Cosette asked, as she stepped into the kitchen.

"The partition of Poland," he told her. "It's--"

"Oh no, you've mentioned Poland," said Pontmercy dolorously, which was the first thing he'd said since his mumble at her door.

"The partition of Poland is very important in terms of both the suffering of her own people and wider principles of national sovereignty--" Feuilly started again, but before he could elaborate, Cosette heard another knock on her door.

"Oh dear, I'll have to go get that," she said, "And I've only just started the tea."

"Don't worry yourself," Feuilly said cheerfully, picking up the teapot, "I can manage the tea."

"I-- thank you," Cosette said, not sure what else to do, and fled back up the corridor. _Surely_ this time it would be Toussaint; Toussaint would know what to do. But it wasn't. It was two more young men. Or rather, it was a young man with a young boy riding on his shoulders. They came in as soon as the door began to open; the boy wore clothes that looked as if he had pulled them from a trash-heap, but the man wore a reasonably respectable bottle-green coat and hat that matched the wine-bottles they were each carrying. 

"What can I do for you?" Cosette asked, allowing herself a bit of a frown. 

"Grantaire, at your service," the man said, and the boy on his shoulders tipped his hat for him, and then said "Gavroche, at your service," and tipped his own.

"At your service as well," Cosette replied without meaning to.

"Ah, Pontmercy and Feuilly are here already, I see," said Grantaire. "Let's join the party! Or, as neither Pontmercy nor Feuilly would know a party if it left a gilded visiting-card via a footman dressed as Dionysus, let's rather get the party started. The others will be here soon, after all."

A party? Cosette didn't like the sound of that. On the other hand, it would have been rather less than respectable for her to entertain two young men by herself, with no chaperone; surely, she thought, if there were four or five, and a little boy, they could chaperone each other. I need some tea, she thought, and to sit down quietly for a moment and figure out what to do.

The tea she could manage, for a soon as they returned to the kitchen, Feuilly offered her a cupful, and very well-made it was, too. The quiet was more difficult: she perched herself on the stool by the stove while her visitors began to talk about Kings, and Emperors, and Republics, and Charters, and all sorts of things which Cosette knew nothing about, and thought she was probably happier not knowing about.

She had barely begun to drink when, BAM, there was a banging at the door, almost as if somebody was trying to knock it down at one blow. "Someone at the door," she said blankly.

"Several someones, by the sound of it," Grantaire said. "Also we passed them on the road."

Cosette went to answer it, but halfway down the passage the poor girl could not handle it any longer, and slid down against the wall, and buried her head in her hands. "But," she said to herself, "Papa has always taught me that it is the duty of a Christian to show hospitality to strangers, and never to turn anyone away from one's doorstep, no matter how strange and scary they may be. And after all, these young men may be very strange, but they are not all that scary. I must pull myself together." Then there was another loud thumping noise from the door, and this time someone yelled "Ouch!" and then a less polite word afterward, and so she made herself go and let them in.

This time it was FOUR young men. They bowed to her and introduced themselves as Jehan and Joly and Bossuet and Bahorel, and hung a threadbare, grayish top hat, a shiny new black one, one that was pinstriped in red and gold, and a blue velvet hood that looked as if it belonged in one Victor Hugo's sillier novels on the pegs beside the others, along with a silver-tipped walking cane that Joly leant against the wall. "And I am really sorry about Bossuet," Joly said, "somehow he managed to stub his toe while standing perfectly still on your porch."

Bossuet smiled sheepishly and hopped on one foot.

By the time they got back to the kitchen, the wine-bottles were open, the table was covered in plates and cups and silver, and Gavroche had gotten into the bread and the cheese, "and I don't suppose you have any butter or jam, have you, please? Only I haven't had any jam since last spring."

Well, that she could not say no to: whatever else her papa would think of this gathering, if she were to refuse jam to a child as thin as Gavroche, he would never forgive her, and so she went to get it, but before she had quite made it back someone asked if there were any fruit, or cakes, and did she keep coffee in the house, by any chance? And Cosette would like to think that she had always treated servants well, and did not bristle at serving others, and the young men were quite polite generally, but all the same, between the unexpected people, who were already rather crowding her little kitchen, and the noise, and the being kept on her feet, she was rather cross by the time there was another knock at the door. This one was a crisp and businesslike tap. 

"That'll be the rest, then," Bahorel said, as he peeled one of the boiled eggs she had been saving for Sunday; and she frowned and stomped off down the hall, thinking "That had best be the _last_ of them, or I don't quite know what I shall do."

She yanked the door open quite fiercely and then found two rather lovely young men fallen flat on her mat.

"Combeferre!" one of them said to the other, as they picked themselves up and brushed off their trousers.

"Courfeyrac!" the other one said back. "I am sorry, ma'am," he added to her, "only there was a fascinating caterpillar crawling along your eves - I have never seen its like in Paris - Courfeyrac was only helping me to reach it, we did not intend to fall."

"I should hope not!" said the third young man, who Cosette had not noticed in all the excitement, although now that she had, she wondered how she had missed him, for he was almost unbearably beautiful, in a bright red waistcoat that showed off the powerful slenderness of his figure, and a nimbus of yellow curls that flowed around his face, and features that ought to have been carved of marble.

Cosette double-checked to make sure her mouth was not hanging open.

"These two ruffians are Courfeyrac and Combeferre," he said, gesturing to the young men who were, if slightly less stunningly beautiful, both impeccably dressed as gentlemen, "and I am Enjolras, of the Friends of the ABC, and we are all at your service, and wish to thank you most cordially for your kind offer to let us use your home for a safe meeting-place in this emergency."

Cosette wanted to say, "What offer? What emergency? I have never heard of the Friends of the ABC before in my life," but instead she said, "No, of course, come in, I am glad to be of service," and he _smiled_ and it shone even brighter than his hair, and then there were more hats hanging on her pegs (though only two, for Courfeyrac seemed to have misplaced his.)

Before she could gather her wits, or indeed even shut the door, Éponine came flying up the walk, barefooted and fey as always, and said, "Good, you all found the place, then, hello, Cosette, these are the nice young men I was telling you about this morning, don't mind Enjolras too much, it wears off after you have to listen to him talk for awhile."

"You sent them here!" Cosette exclaimed. Suddenly it began to - well, not make sense, but begin to look as if it might make sense, some day.

"Of course I did," Éponine said; "Didn't I tell you that you needed more excitement in your life, something to get you out of this dull dark house?"

"Éponine," Courfeyrac said, with narrowed eyes, "Did you _ask_ Cosette if we could meet here, or simply tell her?"

"Obviously I asked her, and she is happy to be of assistance," Éponine said, breezing her way into the house, "Cosette is an adventuress and a Republican both by blood and inclination, and would never turn away a man in need, isn't that right, Cosette?"

"No, of course not," Cosette said, "If someone is in need--"

"Well, there you go then," Éponine declared, as if that settled everything. "You needn't worry about Toussaint," she whispered loudly in Cosette's ear as she squeezed by, "I passed on the five francs you gave me this morning; she will be at her sister's until to-morrow. Lord, I hope they've left some food," she added, "I'm absolutely starving."


End file.
